Repair & Maintenance Log
08/21/09: Acquired game.
09/03/09: Replaced power cord.
01/15/12: Added remote battery backup. Instead of permanently soldering some sort of remote battery setup to the CPU board I made battery place-holders from 1/2 inch dowel. This method requires no board modifications. And no connectors are needed between the board and the battery pack. The battery pack is from Great Plains Electronics. I like that the pack is fully enclosed. I don't like that it has an integral ON/OFF switch. I set the switch to ON and put a blob of silicone caulk over it. The battery wires are mounted to an end of each dowel with a screw and crimp terminal. The screw head becomes the "battery terminal". Don't forget to account for the height of the screw head when figuring the length of the dowel. I wired the battery pack with 8' leads. Instead of placing the battery pack in the head, I drop it down into the body and place it next to the cash box. Opening the coin door is easier than opening the head. The idea is that I'll be better motivated to replace the batteries more often.
Battery place-holders and remote battery pack. Note the blob of silicone over the battery pack switch.
The CPU board shows how each battery must be oriented, but does not show the location of +4.5 volts. Before removing the old batteries I used my volt meter to confirm that the upper-right terminal of the battery holder is +4.5 volts.
Important: Grand Lizard is one (if not the only) System-11 game with the CPU board mounted "right-side-up". This is similar to the previous System-9 CPU boards. Any other System-11 will probably have its CPU board mounted "up-side-down". In that case +4.5 volts will be at the lower-left corner of the battery holder.
Dowel sticks in place.
03/23/12: New legs, bolts and levelers.
03/24/12: Installed standard-keyed (751) lock on coin door.
10/16-02/17: Shopped game. When I bought this game seven years ago it was advertised as "shopped". That meant the playfield had been wiped down. Nevertheless, the game worked well so I never did much beyond an occasional waxing and routine maintenance. But there was a lot of ancient slathered wax residue everywhere and a lot of tarnished metal. Plus the flipper mechs were badly worn and had far too much travel. And I never liked the purple flipper rubber. Time to get to work.
Upper right corner of playfield showing the general condition with lots of dirt, wax residue and tarnished metal.
The metal ball guide around the upper left cave feature was cracked near the upper left flipper. I sent the rail off to a place called Fabrication Unlimited (www.FabUnlimited.com) which had been promoted on PinSide. They TIG welded the part for $20 plus shipping. Turnaround was one week including shipping. Two thumbs up!
Cracked ball guide mounting tab.
TIG welded repair.
Years ago I acquired a set of reproduction drop target decals. They're thin, too glossy and cut too small. Nevertheless, some of the originals were worn through so I decided to replace all the originals with the new repros.
New decal (left) compared with two originals.
Aside from being worn, the upper flippers had incorrect coils and one of the bottom coils was missing its label. So I replaced all the coils as well as all the mechanical parts. Arguably I should have upgraded to parallel wound coils and extension return springs. But the old-style flipper mech bases don't have the extended EOS switch bracket to accommodate the arc-suppressing capacitor and extension spring. So I just rebuilt the flippers to their original configuration. Note that the lower flippers include lane-change switches although there is no lane change and high score initials are entered via the Magna-save buttons. The left lane-change switch is not connected, but the right switch is wired to the switch matrix at position 48. I'm not sure of its purpose.
New coils.
New coil stop compared to one of the worn old stops.
Renewed upper flippers with crappy new pawl bolts.
The new flipper pawl bolts had integrated washers which I pulled apart while tightening. So I reused all the old bolts, washers and nuts which seemed much stronger.
New (top) versus old pawl bolts.
Renewed lower flippers.
Topside I replaced all the flipper bats and finally got rid of the ugly purple rubber.
Old bats, old rubber and excessive travel from worn parts.
New bats, new rubber, new mechanical parts and proper travel.
While I had the upper flipper mechs removed I noticed a broken flash lamp warming resistor which I replaced. The warming resistors were abandoned on later games so the repair was arguably unnecessary.
New warming resistor.
While I was working on the playfield I lost all playfield solenoids due to a broken solenoid power line at the upper left flash lamp. The solenoid power line from the main wiring harness was immediately daisy-chained to the upper left flash lamp. The wire was absorbing a lot of strain from the rest of the wiring harness. I extended the power line further up the wiring harness and then looped back to the flash lamp from beyond the first strain relief. Note that Grand Lizard has an unusually low number of flash lamp and solenoid circuits. Accordingly it's one of a few System-11 games without a multiplexing A/C relay setup. Both the flash lamp and solenoid circuits are connected to the same daisy-chained solenoid power line. Also note that flash lamps are arranged in series pairs. If one lamp burns out, both remain dark.
Broken solenoid power line at the upper left flash lamp.
Rerouted solenoid power line.
The multiball eject cam had become misaligned because the pivot pin broke free from the mounting bracket and was slowly self-destructing. I replaced the mounting bracket, but there may be an error with the part number. There are left and right hand versions of the part which are A-8268 and A-8268-1. Which is which? The Grand Lizard manual says A-8268. But the parts suppliers say A-8268-1.
The pivot pin broke free from the mounting bracket.
Part number error?
There were no other mechanical or electrical repairs to be made on the playfield. The playfield was populated almost entirely with grubby old #44 lamps. I cleaned all the inserts and re-lamped the playfield with #47 bulbs. All the flashers are #63 bulbs. All the playfield rubber and balls were replaced. Otherwise this project was mostly a matter of disassembling, cleaning, polishing, reassembling and waxing.
The plastics were in pretty decent shape. But at the last minute I decided to buy a new reproduction set. These were produced by Planetary Pinball. As usual I covered the underside of the plastics with a layer of Mylar. The Mylar helps protect the plastics from hardware scratches. I tape down a sheet of Mylar sticky-side-up, place the plastics and then cut them out with razor blades and an X-Acto knife. Two plastics were not Mylared because they had transparent areas I didn't want to obscure. These were the upper-left cave plastic and the plastic between the center spinner and the ball lock passage.
Applying Mylar to the underside of the new plastics.
Some plastics included metal spacers that were crimped (like a rivet) to the plastic. The crimp can be cut off with a sharp drill bit. I didn't try re-crimping the spacers to the new plastics. Everything is adequately held in place with the original mounting screws.
Old plastics with integrated spacers and a removed spacer with its crimp cut off.
The new plastics fit perfect except for the center plastic. I had to trim a bit for the spinner crank and trim a little more for the A ramp.
Center plastic trimmed for the spinner crank.
Center plastic trimmed for the A ramp.
The ramp flaps were worn and rusty. I polished them and tried an application of gun bluing. But the bluing had no effect. So I re-polished and left them as is. The ramps are in great shape, but they felt thin and flimsy. Riveting on a new set of flaps seemed unwise. So I left well enough alone.
A polished ramp flap.
A look at the ramp exit switch and flash lamp assembly with lizard head removed.
New instruction and price cards.
I cleaned the insert panel and re-lamped from #44 to #47 bulbs.
02/19/17: Added fuses to the AC sides of the solenoid and lamp matrix rectifiers. This modification is generally recommended for System-11 and System-11A games prior to the advent of the auxiliary power driver board found in System-11B and later games. The fuse modification potentially protects the game from shorted rectifiers.
8 amp slow-blow fuses added to the AC sides of the solenoid (top) and lamp matrix rectifiers.
02/25/17: Replaced header pins and capacitors on the power supply board. All the displays went out which seemed to be from a bad connector 3P5 at the power supply board. I replaced the connector 3P5. I also pulled the board and replace all header pins. While I was at it I also replaced all the board's electrolytic capacitors. Grand Lizard is notorious for having a noisy sound system. Re-capping the power supply helped. But Grand Lizard is still the noisiest of my System-11 games.
New capacitors and header pins.
As identified by the serial number decal, the power supply board was originally from a Pin*bot (model 549). Although it's the same board as Grand Lizard, boards may be fused differently depending on the game application. This board was still fused for Pin*bot. F2 and F4 should be 2.5A and 10A, respectively for Grand Lizard. Check your fuses!
The same board may be fused differently depending on the game application.
After ten years of tinkering with pinball boards I finally decided to buy a board vice and an electric solder sucker. What a difference! Not having these tools is just stupid.
A PanaVise Work Center and an Aoyue 8800 Desoldering Gun.
I didn't have an axial capacitor for C10 so I rigged a radial. Note that resistors R1 and R4 had been previously replaced. Otherwise the board appeared unmolested.
Radial capacitor for C10.
New connector 3P5 for the high voltage display power.